The use of polymer foams is becoming increasingly important due to the attainable weight reduction and value‐added properties. The development of foam structures is a popular research area as they have outstanding energy absorbing capability, which is related to the special deformation mechanisms of the cell structure (cell wall buckling and collapse of the cells). This property is exploited by the sports industry, where the main task of such products is to protect the health of the athlete and to ensure safe sports conditions. This review provides a comprehensive presentation of the advanced energy absorbing applications of polymeric foams in sports. The article presents in detail the processing technologies of polymer foams, as well as the sports‐specific regulations which contain the requirements for sports products. The impact damping of polymeric foams is typically determined by falling weight impact tests, which were used in several previous studies. However, it is a great challenge to compare the published results, as the test parameters and the tested materials are different. Currently, an unexplored field of research is the detailed study of multilayer sandwich foam structures. Understanding the effect of layer order on mechanical properties would help researchers achieve a major improvement in this field.

We performed the complex static and dynamic mechanical characterization of cross-linked polyethylene foams; we investigated the effect of foam density on various mechanical properties and the relationship between cell structure and mechanical behavior. The impact damping and energy absorption properties of the foams were determined by falling weight impact tests, while static mechanical properties were determined by compression and compression set tests. The experimental results validated our hypothesis that the relationship between the above-mentioned mechanical properties and density can be described with the power law with good approximation.

This study examines the effect of foam thickness on impact damping properties of closed-cell cross-linked polyethylene foams of different densities. Compression tests and falling weight impact tests were performed to detect the most important mechanisms, which affect the mechanical properties of the foams. The results showed that impact damping properties are significantly influenced by foam thickness, while energy-absorbing capability primarily depends on foam density. The average cell diameter was determined with a

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We performed the dynamic mechanical investigation of cross-linked polyethylene (XL-PE) foams, which are the most commonly used polymer foams for damping purposes. Our experiments were primarily focused on analyzing the energy-absorbing capability of foams with different densities and studying the relationship between cell structure and shock absorption. The cell structure and energy absorption properties of the foams were determined by mechanical tests and microscopic examination. The samples were subjected to falling dart and falling weight impact tests using different weight geometries and impact energy. Our experiments showed that the impact damping properties of foams are significantly influenced by the deformation mechanisms in the cellular structure during dynamic loading since excessive deformation of the cell walls leads to the compaction of the foam, and therefore a significant reduction in impact damping capability.